


Tomb Raid

by SheliakBob



Category: The Mayan Mummy, The Mole People
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 10:47:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15484071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SheliakBob/pseuds/SheliakBob
Summary: One of the Mole People crosses paths with The Mayan Mummy beneath a forgotten pyramid in the Yucatan.





	Tomb Raid

TOMB RAID: A Mole Man and The Mayan Mummy Cross Paths Beneath a Forgotten Pyramid in the Yucatan.

The thing from beneath the earth pushed with splayed toes while its clawed hands scrabbled at packed claw above it. The broad, round claws punched and scraped until the soil loosened, then it flung the dirt backwards with great breast-stroke style sweeps of its arms. It shoved its bullet-shaped head into the loose earth, nibbling with its vertical maw of a mouth, tasting and sampling, searching for the nutrients its massively powerful body craved constantly. It snorted dirt out of wide ape-like nostrils. Its eyes wide as tea saucers and startlingly white, never blinked. The creature moved ahead and steadily upwards at the pace of a slow walk, leaving a tube of crumbled clay in its wake.  
The Mole-Thing had never pushed this high before, this close to the surface. It felt excitement as well as terror at the prospect of bursting free from the ground which was its home. Its football-sized heart pounded like a drum. It knew that the vibrations of that pulse would travel far through the rock an dirt below, perhaps to be heard by other things that lived below. It wondered what they would think of it, crawling so high that its claws might puncture the roof of their world, might scrape into that mythical thing called sky. Would they dare to give chase, even the forever hungry ones, would they have the courage that it did?   
The Mole-Thing chanted the thrill of its feat in subsonic rumbling utterances that could be heard by its own kind, miles away. There must be witnesses to its boldness!  
The soil it gnawed took on a new flavor, the dry, sour tang of old death, of flesh long, long ago rotted and turned to dust. Thick veins of blackened soil, the crunchy remnants of rivers of blood that had been allowed to soak into the earth curled around it, like the roots of a bitter tree of death. Now it fed in earnest, great finger-like mandibles on either side of its mouth stretching out, rasping, pulling the soil into its maw. So much death! So ancient, decomposed to a mere after-taste in the tainted ground. Where there was so much detritus of mortality, there was also often carrion to be found. The sweet, chalky delight of bones! A feast, waiting to be found.  
Then, the unthinkable happened. The creature’s claws struck hard stone, flat but thin. The echoes of its scratching told it that there was an opening beyond, a void.  
Scritch, scratch, a large void!  
Could this be it? Had the thing reached the top of the world, where there was only ever unending openness above?  
Excitedly, filled with a fright bordering on panic, it struck upwards with its claws. The stone chipped, then it cracked, then piston-like jabs of talons as hard as pick-axes shattered it. The rubble was quickly swept aside.  
The creature’s head burst free, shoved up into open air. It breathed in stale, close air that had been sealed beneath tons of stone many centuries ago. The air carried the musty stench of hundreds of dead bodies, withered, dry and crackly like old leaves. No breeze had ever carried the stench away. It had been sealed in this closed, dark place like a bubble of rot beneath the skin of the earth.  
It was a heady perfume to the thing from below.  
Eagerly it wiggled its way up, dropping its body free from the dirt until it stood upright on a stone floor. Loose dirt cascaded off its head, off its shoulders, and from its humped back. Pebbles clattered around it, striking up brittle sounding echoes.  
There was a ceiling overhead. Stone. Many, many tons of it. The Mole-Thing had not quite broken clear to the surface. But it was near! Nearer to the uncanny void of sky than any of its kind had ever climbed!  
This was a cave, of some sort. The walls were stone, but the stones had been cut and shaped and piled together to create this artificial cavern. Such odd creatures that must have built it! To work so long and so hard to reproduce that which was already in existence below their feet, in great abundance.  
The Mole-Thing shuffled about, clawed hands scraping along shaped stone surfaces. Stones carved in the shapes of faces. Whole walls furrowed and crannied with intricately chiseled designs. They must have meant something to the creatures who built this place. Like the droning subsonic songs of the Mole People, carrying information to others of their kind, speaking over gulfs of time the way the Mole People spoke across gulfs of distance.  
Petrified songs!  
What a wonder, the Mole Thing thought to itself.  
Now, to find something to eat…

Popoca woke to the loud crack of breaking stone.  
Mind dull from long ages of sleep, he almost convinced himself that the sound meant nothing. Simply a stone cracking under the pressure of the pyramid above, or falling from a broken ceiling.  
Then there was the clatter of pebbles on the floor.  
Sharp, staccato clicks.  
Still, perhaps just the settling of the ruin.  
Popoca tried to sink again into the black numbness of sleep. But already he was too awake.  
Grudgingly, he flexed fingers curled into dry claws for centuries. They cracked, creaked, but began to move slowly, forced into a semblance of life by the ancient Prince’s will.  
Perhaps, perhaps if he just sat here, trying to remember what breathing felt like, the echoes would die off and he could sleep once more.  
Then he heard the shoof-shoof of shuffling footsteps.  
A heart was beating! Loud and hard. Steady. A blasphemy!  
No heart should beat here, beneath the Still Mother’s sacred mountain. All hearts here belonged to Caltiki, Goddess of Death and She craved silence above all else.  
He would rip out the intruder’s offending organ. Rip it out and offer it to the Still Mother as a sacrifice! As his own heart had been offered an eternity ago.  
Popoca was already rising slowly, ponderously, when he heard another sound, a sound that sent pangs of cold horror racing down his dead spine.  
Crack and crunch. Snap and grind.  
Something was EATING the dead interred with him!  
Eaters of the Dead, in this most holy of places!  
Popoca leaped to his feet, outrage sending icy currents of strength to his numb limbs.  
He turned toward the sounds.  
Everything was a gray shapelessness.  
Then… there! The pulsing of that horrid heart. Around a corner from his throne of watchfulness, but each beat sent a pulse of slight shuddering through the vault, outlining the shapes between him and that horrible, living heart.  
Popoca tried to shout a war cry, but all that came out was a raspy growl. His throat was too dry, his tongue long withered to a crisp clump clinging to his lower jaw.  
His grasping fingers found the hilt of his Macauitl with its long blade of fire-hardened, lacquered wood and double rows of embedded shark teeth. It was sharp enough to slice open a man’s throat with one blow. Popoca knew this because he had done that very thing with it, many times.  
In his day, Popoca had been the fiercest, proudest warrior of a fierce and proud people.  
The intruder, with his sacrilegious feasting and hideously beating heart had made his last mistake!  
Popoca ground his teeth and shuffled to battle.

When the mummified Mayan Prince finally came upon the intruder, he was so shocked that he swayed on his feet, mind reeling at the horror. The hideous thing was not human! It was some misshapen demon crawled out of the madness of the World Below. It had broken open the stone sarcophagus of Tzompan and was rooting around face down in the skeleton’s ribcage. Whatever it was, the ghoulish thing hummed happily to itself, crunching and slurping at bare bones.  
Popoca knew Tzompan, they spoke together often. Tzompan was a priest and a philosopher. He had a tendency to drone on and on and on in his whispery, breathless voice, musing endlessly about things that Popoca had never bothered to ponder even once. Popoca was a practical man, a man of action. He cared not about the greater mysteries, about what songs the stars sang or whether stingrays thought they swam in the sky on a clear day. These things lie beyond the knowledge of even dead men and were of no interest to the sullen Prince. But, his vigil was a long and lonely one. He was happy to have the company of even a pedantic mumbler of a priest as the ages turned.  
Now the ghost of that priest screamed in horrible agony as his earthly remains were devoured by some kind of monster.  
Hissing with rage, Popoca lunged forward bringing his macauitl down on the thing’s misshapen, humped back. The shark teeth blade sliced easily through the simple garment of burlap-like cloth the thing wore. But the teeth couldn’t bite through the thick, pebbly hide beneath. The thing’s skin was tough and covered with stone hard nodules of some sort.  
The macauitl shattered on its hide, scattering broken shark teeth about the vault and falling to splinters in Popoca’s hand.  
The heart inside the beast, which Popoca could see as a pulsating red light that glowed through its flesh, jumped a beat and sped up considerably. He may not have harmed it, but Popoca certainly had the monster’s attention now!

Just as the Mole Thing was munching contentedly on a rare treat of rib bones, savoring the chalky flavor of the calcium and the coppery tang of old blood, something lunged out of the darkness and struck it on the back. The blow caused no injury but it stung considerably. The beast let out a basso profundo roar and spun to face its assailant.  
It was startled when it could not see what had attacked it.  
It turned from side to side, sweeping the vault with its subterranean eyes. It could see the heat of a living body. Even the heat from its own body cast a ruddy glow about it. But there was no warm body anywhere near it. Just the vague blue-black of cold stone. The Mole People’s eyes evolved to see different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. They could see the background radiation from compressed rocks as a kind of greenish glow. Different types of magnetic waves appeared as purplish hazes or shimmering violet ripples to their eyes. But this close to the surface, there wasn’t enough of the familiar radiation to see by. Even the magnetic hazes were distorted, casting wild ripples that flickered and wavered revealing only misshapen shadows instead of clear shapes.   
Whatever the attacker was, it struck again, pounding at the Mole Thing with fierce, hammering blows. Invisible fists lashed out from the cold-dark.  
The Mole Thing wailed in terror.

Popoca snarled deep in his chest. Weaponless, he struck with the only things left to him, his own fists. The dumb thing just stood there, staring blankly at and past Popoca with its wide white eyes. He pounded it with all his might, but the thing must be numb to pain as well as sightless. It didn’t even blink under the flurry of blows, seeming barely to feel punches so hard that Popoca’s own fingers were beginning to crack and break apart.

There!  
As his invisible attacker lunged in for another blow, the Mole Thing finally saw it. A blur of movement, a shadow cast by the faint glow of the burrower’s own body heat. That’s why it couldn’t see the thing! It was cold. As cold as bare, unliving stone. Even the lowliest crawling cave cricket shone faintly to the Mole People’s sight. But there was no hint of warmth or life in the thing attacking it. None at all.  
The attacker was a dead thing, a dead thing that moved!  
The once intrepid explorer let out a rumbling shriek of horror.  
It struck out blindly at the dead thing. Its claws snagged rotted cloth, some kind of poncho-like body covering that the dead thing wore. Once the Mole Thing struck the feathers of a ceremonial headdress. Having no idea what feathers were, the Mole Thing thought it had struck a stiff row of antennae.   
When its claws did make contact with the dark body of the attacker, it found dried, hardened flesh like thick clumps of jerky wrapped around bones hardened beyond anything in nature.  
The Mole Thing’s head ached from the constant rain of punches striking it. It was growing dizzy and disoriented.  
Finally, it turned its body sideways to its foe, then lashed out with a vicious backward sweep of its claws.  
The hump on its back was not a deformity or a malformation.  
Birds have a protruding, curved breastbone designed to anchor muscles for wings that must sweep forward with enough force to lift their bodies in flight. The Mole People have a similar bony structure on their backs, designed to anchor arm muscles that must sweep backwards with enough force to clear tons of dirt and rock from their paths. Their arms are strong, if clumsy, when jabbing forwards or down, but they are frighteningly superhuman when sweeping backwards in a backhand.  
The Mole Thing’s backsweeping blow struck the belly of its attacker. Skin as thick and hard as shoe leather ripped like paper. A stream of dried flowers, seeds, spices, and ground cocoa beans gushed through the wound, the filling that was packed into the mummy’s body cavity after its guts and organs were scooped out.  
The dead thing staggered backwards, clutching at its torn open belly with both hands. An incoherent hiss of rage blew through its cracked lips.  
With the dead thing injured and slowed down, the Mole Thing sought to escape this vault of horrors. It stooped forward and fast shuffled back the way it came, searching with its toes for the bare spot of earth it climbed through to enter the Mayan tomb

Popoca swayed on his feet. He felt his essence, his unliving being leaking out through his torn belly. He grew weaker every second.   
The intruder was fleeing now, moving at a slow jog. It swept its feet about in questing circles as it ran, searching for something with its toes on the floor.  
There!  
Popoca saw the monster’s goal. A large paving stone on the floor was broken and pushed away. There was a pit, a loose-soiled crater of sorts in the ground beneath where it had lain. That must have been where the monster tunneled into the tomb.  
That meant the thing he fought came not from the world of the living, outside the pyramid, but rather from the World Below, as he had feared.  
Popoca’s dried hair prickled at the realization.  
There really was a world of monsters, devourers of the dead, beneath his feet, a world that he knew nothing of save what the whispered legends of his people hinted at. A world that could be teeming with such ghoulish, misshapen beings, and into which this desecrating abomination was about to escape.  
Would it tell others of its kind about the tomb? Send more such monsters to invade Popoca’s domain, to defile the Still Mother’s stone womb?  
He couldn’t chance it.  
He couldn’t let the thing escape unscathed to return in force with more such intruders.  
Popoca summoned the last energy draining from his cold legs and ran forward. Three long, stiff strides brought him back into contact with the monster. He clutched the gaping wound in his belly with one hand, squeezing the jagged edges shut. The other hand whipped out, wrapped around the thing’s head from behind. He dug his fingers into the malformed face and raked them hard. He felt fingers claw across and into a gigantic eye. The outer lens of the eye broke like an eggshell. The runny yoke inside dribbled out over his hand.  
The monster bellowed with pain. Its voice was inaudible to Popoca but he felt the vibrations in his bones, in the teeth that rattled in his skull.  
The thing reached the spot of bare dirt it sought and immediately leaped feet first into it. It wiggled in an odd corkscrewing motion, hands clutched over its face, over the injured eye, and disappeared in seconds. Spent and nearly out of the ceremonial ingredients that fueled his endless unlife, Popoca slumped to the floor beside the hole.

The Mole Thing howled in agony.  
It had never experienced pain like this before. Its right eye was destroyed, a molten pit of pain that would never heal. It tunneled back down toward the safer depths, the sheltering familiar caves below as fast as it could.  
Ripples from its screams of pain reached the others of its kind, reached the ears of the Old Ones who always cautioned adventurous youths never to go near the surface, the dreaded Hall of Open Ceilings.  
The echoes that welcomed the once bold Mole Thing back to its people were scolding and laughter that dug deeper wounds than the mummy’s fingers had.

Popoca lie on his back on the tomb’s stone floor.  
He poured handfuls of his scattered body-fill back into the gaping hole in his belly, after painstakingly sweeping up as much of it as he could.  
Then he took a needle made from the barb of a stingray’s tail, and with thread woven from human hair he began to carefully, clumsily sew his own gut shut again. The task was tiresome and time consuming. He had to push the needle barb through leather tough skin with numb fingers.   
As he worked, Popoca vowed that he would remain where he lie, beside the monster’s pit, even after he piled broken stones back over it, to ensure that the ghoul never returned by that route.  
His vigil remained, unending.  
He just wished Tzompan’s ghost would stop screaming, eventually.  
Eternity was long enough a time to endure without the constant screech of a wounded phantom!


End file.
